I have been freshening up my reading on the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. I read the book years ago and just read the one for children. I enjoyed asking my kids the online quiz to see what their love language was (although I knew what they would say). The quiz is fun to do together and I would recommend doing it with your children. My kids loved it!
The premise behind these books are that people have different love languages that fall into five categories. To have their love tank filled, or to feel loved, you must speak their love language. I have been thinking on this in light of our love relationship with God. What makes us feel loved by God? Does He need to speak our unique love language?
I would like to list the love language, show how God demonstrates His love in that area, and then I will conclude with a point that hit home for me.
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Words of Affirmation
God speaks many wonderful words of affirmation to us. He tells us He loves us, He tells us all the things that we can do through His power, He shares with us that He longs for our fellowship, He calls us His bride, and many other things are given to us in the Word of God to strengthen us, build us up and encourage us.
Quality Time
We always have God’s attention when we come to Him. He never tells us to wait a minute, He never shoos us out the door because He is listening to someone else at the moment, He never tells us to come back later, and He never only listens half-way. Quite the opposite actually. He promises us that he hears us when we cry, He promises that He will never leave us or forsake us, and He tells us to come boldly to His throne anytime we need Him.
Receiving Gifts
Gifts from God? Just look around you! You are breathing, you have a roof over your head, food in your stomach, children laughing around you, a job, a vehicle, a church home, health….I could go on and on! God is constantly bestowing gifts and He gladly makes us the recipients.
Acts of Service
God doesn’t just say He loves us, He shows us. He proves it. He blesses us, comforts us, encourages us, watches over us, strengthens us, and on and on. Yes, there are many things that God does for us.
Physical Touch
To think that because God is in Heaven and we are on the Earth and so we are not capable of being touched by Him, is a major fallacy. God touches my life in such a personal way. You would have to be a child of God to know this. God has touched my heart. God has touched my life. I have not seen the arms of God around me, but I have felt them in my heart. I have not seen the protective hands of God in my life, but I have witnessed evidence of them and felt safe in them. God is a God of physical touch
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ These are the 5 love language categories, and God is in no way limited to the categories of a human author. However, based on the reading of these books, one thing stuck out to me. It said that whatever your love language is and how you receive love, is how you will show your love to others. I wonder if we show these things back to God?Do we give Him words of affirmation? No, He doesn’t need encouraged but do we praise Him? Tell Him we adore Him? Tell Him that we could not live life without Him?Do we spend quality time with Him? If He is speaking to us, do we put Him off? Do we ignore Him because it inconveniences us? Do we only approach him when we need to get something out of Him?
Do we give Him the gift of our hearts? Time? Resources? Life? What have we given to Him lately?
Do we do more than say we love Him? Do we act like it? Do we serve Him? Does He look at us and know that we love Him by what we do, not just what we say?
Do we touch Him? Do we touch the heart of God?
The beauty of all this, is that God still gives His love freely whether I do or not. That is the beauty of unconditional love. This is also why our love tank never needs to be empty. Even if everyone else around you is clueless about what you need to feel loved, God is not! He covers every category and more! In Him, our love tank can always be full!
If we can truly grasp the love we have in God, we will be better at showing love to everyone else because we will always be full!
Go fill up!
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